Dan Hodges is a former Labour Party and GMB trade union official, and has managed numerous independent political campaigns. He writes about Labour with tribal loyalty and without reservation. You can read Dan's recent work here

Ed Miliband is finally walking the walk. Now he needs to talk the talk, as well

Well you can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm Ed Miliband, no time to talk

The Tories are extending their poll lead. Ed Miliband is now stuck firmly below Nick Clegg in terms of public approval. Labour supporters are up in arms over their party’s new stance on cuts and the economy.

Yep. Last week was one of the best of Ed Miliband’s leadership.

These things are relative, of course. Ideally Labour would be 40 points ahead of the coalition, Vince Cable and Simon Hughes would spend each PMQs squashed alongside Ed Balls and Harriet Harman, and George Osborne would have long since fled to a tax heaven in the Maldives. But beggars can’t be choosers. And all in all, Miliband is on the up.

First there was this weekend’s ComRes poll comparing various prospective leadership challengers. It indicated that only one, his brother David, would improve Labour’s standing, and that by a statistically insignificant 3 per cent. It also showed that his only other realistic challenger, Yvette Cooper, is not yet well enough known by the public for them to pass judgment. Whatever doubts persist over Ed Miliband’s leadership, his party is not about to tear itself apart over a three-point poll bounce.

Then there was the evidence from the same poll that Miliband and Ed Ball’s gamble on staking out a new economic position is paying off. 43 per cent of voters agree with their new stance, compared to 26 per cent who oppose. Labour supporters, unsurprisingly, are more hostile, but by a much narrower margin, 33 per cent to 40 per cent. It will take time for this new position to become embedded, and the reaction from irate Labour activists and a confused electorate will be reflected in a short-term dip in Labour’s overall poll rating. But it’s clear Miliband and Balls are charting the right strategic course.

A further positive is that Miliband’s potential critics on the left, the "Flat-Earthers" who have been demanding no surrender on cuts or the deficit, are now in utter disarray. “Just when Labour is proving right on the economy and right on social policy is no time to panic or trim to Osborne's levels of austerity,” wrote the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee on December 30th, “cutting the deficit half as fast is enough”. Yet by Saturday even the High Priestess of Flat-Earthism was scrambling to safety from her crumbling temple: “Nothing the Eds say can gain traction until they stand on a solid economic platform. They have lost the Keynesian argument (for now): the paradox of thrift is just too paradoxical for the public. Unfairly, people think Labour borrowed too much and would again. There's no point beating their heads against the ballot box: instead, change the conversation”.

As I wrote late week, Ed Miliband has given himself a chance. An opportunity if not to rescue, then at least to re-define, his leadership. But there’s a small problem. One of the people who doesn’t seem to recognise this opportunity is Ed Miliband himself.

“People were very down on Friday,” said one leadership insider. “The sense in the office was, ‘we’re battling the unions, we’re battling the party’. It’s not really where we want to be”.

This was evident in the reaction to Len McCluskey’s two-footed lunge in last Tuesday’s Guardian. Although initially holding their nerve, the week ended with Labour’s leadership team keenly avoiding any further fifty-fifty challenges. “Balls softens stance on pay restraint” was the headline in the Financial Times, after the shadow chancellor sent a bizarre letter to his opposite number demanding a “fair” public sector pay cap. This was then followed by Ed Miliband’s even more surreal statement in a local radio interview that he actually wanted to seen an expansion of the public sector. “We’re not short of things to do in our country”, he said.

Those close to Labour’s leader are adamant that there will be no retreat from the new language of fiscal responsibility and touch choices on public spending. A trip later in the week to the World Economic Forum in Davos is likely to see these themes reinforced.

Yet there is no avoiding the fact Miliband still looks distinctly uncomfortable when attempting to shift his party to the right. On the economy and welfare reform he is finally starting to move in the direction the politics of the moment dictate. But he is doing so without conviction.

Part of this may be tactical. Positioning Ed as a reluctant, rather than instinctive, political triangulator. But if it is, it’s creating more problems than it solves.

Ed Miliband is actually beginning to walk the walk on policy. But, weirdly, he is not yet talking the talk. He is changing Labour’s positioning on the cuts and benefits. But he is failing to construct a convincing and credible narrative about why he personally thinks they are vital for his country and his party. He projects awkwardness, rather than belief, in the stances he’s adopting.

Which is a shame. Because Ed Miliband is finally taking some of those tough decisions he promised us. What he needs now is to show he has conviction to sit alongside his courage.